The Army on Tuesday censured a retired three-star general for a "perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

Army Secretary Pete Geren asked an Army review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger should also have his rank reduced.

Geren told a Pentagon news conference that, while Kensinger was "guilty of deception" in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding the former pro football player's death - at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire.

"He failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control. ... He let his soldiers down," Geren said. "General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground."

At least six other officers received lesser reprimands.

Geren said he considered recommending a court-martial for Kensinger but ruled it out.

What an insult to the Tillmans. What an insult to the intelligence of all of us. NO evidence of a cover-up? Please.

Jane at FDL recounts another failure of memory/failure to appear in the Tillman case, although it appears he's had a change of heart. VoteVets has an open letter to Bush and a petition you can sign.

The usual Republican tactic has been to tell their lie over and over until it becomes "truthiness," and the furor dies down. They've become use to that working, but, for some reason, this time it didn't work out that way. It likely has to do with a number of things.

First off, Pence has screwed this up at every turn. He has a "private" bill signing, but then tweets a picture showing there were, indeed, some obviously important invited guests...and it's easier now for the media to connect the dots on who these guys are, and what their agenda is. Also, Pence's performance on all the news shows and press conferences (except of course the Fox appearance) has been laughable. No one (again, except the Fox echo chamber) is buying the whole, "same as every other bill;" "it actually expands rights for every Indianan;" and "the media has it all wrong."

Combine that with the fact that the best argument they can come up with is that it is just like a bill signed by Clinton over 20 years ago. A lot of folks have done a great job of getting the case in front of the public that this bill is not EXACTLY like the previous bills, and lots of people actually don't give a shit about a bill signed over 20 years ago. Combine all that with the fact that there's been a lot of attitude shifting over the past 20 years in two ways...more LGBT accepting, and less amenable to religions choke-hold on government. (I personally think the krazy kristian kooks have got a little slap happy these past couple of elections, and are now over-playing their hand.)

We are not out of the woods by a long shot, and there are more of these battles to come...and they will be hard fought, but I know these guys never expected the blowback they've received, especially from all the business interests. Hell, it doesn't get any more Republican than the Chamber of Commerce, and even they are throwing a hissy fit. And NASCAR...you're seriously in trouble when NASCAR and the NCAA has turned against you.

Somehow, the stars aligned for people on the right side of history this time, and no one is buying the bullshit they are trying to use to smother this backlash.